


[ Somebody Loves You ]

by justicejipes



Series: The Prison of Guilt [1]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: A very sad 2/2 fic, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Fellas is it gay to be haunted by the one person that you have ever loved, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Persona 5 Protagonist Has A Palace, Persona 5 Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, akira palace AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:07:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29144178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justicejipes/pseuds/justicejipes
Summary: As he uncaps the bottle, Akira tells himself how sad it is, to drink alone, to drink himself to death without a thought of those that likely still cared for him. But if they really cared, they wouldn’t let him fall apart like this.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Series: The Prison of Guilt [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139102
Comments: 9
Kudos: 78





	[ Somebody Loves You ]

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to scream at me on my twitter- @hatofulkareshi

On the nightstand beside his makeshift bed, the nightstand reads a dull, blinking 03:37. The glowing read is a steady reminder of his persisting insomnia, of the exhaustion settling deep into tired bones. Akira doesn’t know what day it is, he doesn’t care to know anymore, and his limbs ache as slowly sits up. There’s always a notion of caution, when he doesn’t know if Morgana’s given up trying to care for him that week, and gone to the Sakura household to sleep instead. He doesn’t want to accept how pathetic it makes him feel, that even his cat doesn’t want to be around him in this state. Not many people do, even those once thought dependable. Akira doesn’t blame them- it’d be cruel to, when he’s gone out of his way to shut out contact with the rest of the world.

There are days when they try, though, to send a text, maybe shoot a call. He knows it’s his lack of response that has driven them away, but deep down there lies an aching hole in his heart, wishing that maybe someone would try harder. At the very same time, Akira isn’t sure he has it in him to care anymore, rarely doing much but sleep all day, or cry in the very worst of it. Dark eyes lined with heavy bags scan the dim room, over two plates near the doorway left untouched, over piles of clothes and useless trash he’s compiled. 

_Akechi-kun would hate to see a mess like this you know_ , Sojiro had tried to tell him once, only resulting in his own lashing out. He still felt horrible for that, but in the moment it… it had felt mocking. 

Reaching a hand beneath his pillow, Akira latches onto a glove that’s fingertips have worn thin, with cracked leather and a spot in the middle of the palm wearing away from his thumb stroking over it. The final piece of his stability, the last piece of Goro he has left. A while back, Ryuji had told him to get rid of it, to toss the thing in the trash and _forget_ , but to forget a reason for living is to forget life itself. Goro wouldn’t want him to throw his life away, Akira used to reason with himself, Goro would want him to keep going just to spite those who told him it was useless.

But the darker part of his psyche, the one that crawls its way ever onward, taking control of the last bits of his sanity, says he would be told to do it. To die just as Goro had, cold and alone with a puppet of himself as his only company. It wasn’t that puppet’s fault that he died, no, it couldn’t be. Cognition isn’t real. However, Akira is. 

_I killed him._

The thought seeps into his mind before he can stop it, and on instinct he sets the glove on top of the pillow now, reaching beneath his bed to grab a bottle from the slowly growing pile. There had been no notice from his manager, or maybe no care in the first place, as he had stuffed bottles into his bag and walked back out the place. In truth, rather than approach him for much at all, most just left him alone the few times he chose to leave LeBlanc for something other than a quick shower at the bathhouse. A rumor had been spreading about his absence at school, Ann had informed him one morning, but Akira told her that there was no point in trying to disprove them. 

School wasn’t in the picture anymore. He dropped out last year if his memory serves right after months of substance abuse, less than halfway through April. It had been two months since losing Goro, and he had found himself unable to leave the house to go to class. 

As he uncaps the bottle, Akira tells himself how sad it is, to drink alone, to drink himself to death without a thought of those that likely still cared for him. But if they really cared, they wouldn’t let him fall apart like this. Perhaps, in another life, he’ll get help, hauled off to a hospital for being a danger to himself. But right now, when he’s steadily marching towards the breaking point, it seems unlikely. There’s nothing else in his stomach to absorb the sip he takes, and his stomach hurts, lurching from the taste.

He’s always despised the bitter flavor of shitty beer, how it makes his insides twist in knots, how it makes his head ache in the mornings that steadily drip into afternoons of blank nothingness. There’s no other escape he’s found, though, that won’t leave a physical mark of his habits, and so he feeds an ichor bliss to the darkness in hopes that the lingering dread will leave him for a moment, if only a moment. It grows when he attempts to find happiness in things, to talk to others, to take care of himself.

With a sigh and a slow shake of his head, Akira tilts the bottle back, allowing more of the liquid to spill down his throat and into an empty stomach. It won’t take long for him to feel the effects, for the tipsy haze to turn into a drunken stupor. Usually, two bottles have him stumbling about the attic, unable to tell right from left, but he’s never been one to stop so soon. He gets drunk to the point of sickness, where he can’t decipher where he is but knows that it scratches his itch to hurt, to feel, to be reminded of his mortality. 

At the end of the day, Akira is not a god. He is nothing more than a pathetic child, once destined for greatness, now pointing a pistol at his liver. Things had been easier. When did it stop?

He takes another sip, fumbles for the glove and clutches it in cold fingers, shaking and silent. 

His throat closes up as if trying to block the liquid poison, and if he had any strength to clean it up, the bottle would’ve been launched halfway across the room by now. Instead, he sets the bottle on the nightstand and rises to his feet, feeling the alcohol rush and his stance grow unsteady.

_“You’re pathetic.”_

The blood in his veins runs cold, and Akira’s glance to the side is met staring down the barrel of a gun. Hilarious, how history rarely fails to repeat itself. 

_“You killed me.”_

A bated breath. 

_“I am the judge, jury, and executioner. Your death will be by my hands and my hands alone.”_

The safety clicks off. 

“I don’t want to die like this,” Akira says, when he finds his words under a lead-heavy tongue.

A bold lie. 

_“And you think I did? You always were selfish.”_

Familiar, yet not. 

_“The only path to forgiveness is death.”_

“I know.” He chokes out, a bead of sweat forming as the pistol nudges between his eyes, and then lowers to his heart. Through the dark of the attic, a blood-red iris meets grey. A cacophony of his own screams rings hollow off the walls, and Akira falls to the floor, gripping his hair, pulling and pulling with no give. 

“Kill me! Kill me, please!”

Blood fills his lungs, a full breath impossible, and Akira finds himself choking on his own tears. Pain is the only source of feeling, but it’s far too much now, claws digging into his chest and tearing until the black of his heart is exposed. When did it begin to feel like this? When did he begin to cry?

Everything had been stable before, at the very least, but now cold metal presses into his flesh, unyielding. He can’t think, can't breathe, can’t do much but wait. 

_In the depths of Mementos, a palace grows, stone walls upon a metal frame._


End file.
